MARK SMITH Advertisement

Tony DeMeo, our incumbent sheriff, has lots to worry about where the primary election results are concerned. After all, he won only a plurality, and he faces in Wade Lieseke a known factor who offers a no-holds-barred effort to regain his former position.

And DeMeo has lots to be optimistic about, too.

That seeming contradiction arises since Lieseke made known his expectation that both Ted Holmes and Mel Jackson would advise their supporters to vote for him in November. That rug was, however, stripped out from under Lieseke's feet when this week both Jackson and Holmes indicated they had no intention of throwing their support his way.

But how much that actually means is a good question. I don't have the impression that politics in Nye County amounts to the machine sort of thing one might once have been accustomed to in, say, Newark, N.J., or St. Louis, Mo., where voters were basically told how to vote by the local ward bosses and then did as they were told.

Whether Holmes and Jackson have any particular sway with those who voted for them is not to be taken for granted, I expect because the motivations among their supporters probably covered a lot of ground.

Some may have voted for Holmes or Jackson because they honestly wanted one or the other to be the next sheriff.

Others may have been voting for "anyone but Lieseke or DeMeo."

How -- or even whether -- the Holmes and Jackson supporters will choose to vote in a couple of months is, to say the least, obscure. If they split down the middle, then DeMeo is in, but if those who voted for Lieseke and Holmes and Jackson were essentially saying they want DeMeo out, then Lieseke will take a substantial majority.

What it will come down to is this: Were the voters who voted against DeMeo more concerned with removing him, or were they hard-core supporters of the man for whom they voted?

Lieseke's statement that he would likely gain the support of Holmes and Jackson will, by the way, leave him looking particularly shaky or nervous in light of their subsequent decision not to offer that support. It would be similar to President Bush announcing that he expects Sen. Harry Reid's support for his Iraq policy only to have Reid perk up the next day and call for withdrawal now, if not sooner.

I do wonder how Jackson might have done if he had started off with a better advertising campaign. Showing up on the tube in a cowboy outfit and a Zorro hat had me staring open-mouthed at my set, wondering if this guy was really serious. His actual experience was masked by the costume.

The business of hopping aboard a horse and galloping away with an old Kim Carnes song bleating in the background just seemed to add to the ad's weirdness.

If first impressions are among the most important for a politician, I think Jackson stumbled right out of the gate.

Given the strength he showed anyway, he might have done far better with a deliberate, straightforward campaign.

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Just a few thoughts on letters to the editor.

I don't think there's much healthier about a community newspaper than a hefty selection of letters to the editor, and all of us want to hear from you and know how you feel about what you see in the paper and around you in the area.

It is often said that brevity is the soul of wit. It is also the soul of journalism, and those who wish their letters to be read probably ought to give some thought to that.

An encyclopedic treatise on this or that subject is probably going to be read by relatively few people, and most of those are probably already aware of and thoroughly concerned about whatever issue is being brought up (the choir, as it were).

But a relatively short, punchy letter is likely to be read by many more people, simply because it is, well, short and punchy.

So, a few do's and don'ts.

Please keep letters to 700 words or less. Longer letters, unless the letter writer is willing to edit them to size, may simply be discarded.

And we must, as in must, have a daytime telephone number that will allow us to call you and confirm that you are, in fact, the person who wrote the letter in question. That goes for emailed letters as well. We want to make sure that no one is signing someone else's name to a letter in order to cause embarrassment or mislead the readers.

Again, no telephone number, no publication of the letter. (If you bring a letter into the front office, just tell whoever helps you that you are, in fact, the author, and make sure she notes that on the letter so we don't have to bother you with a phone call.)

One thing I don't want to do in the future, however, is pursue arguments between letter writers that just go on and on, back and forth. If you have sent in a letter, and then others have countered with their letters, that will, in most cases, be the end of it.

And as I think you all know, we will not withhold the names of letter writers.

Letters are the most direct way you have of expressing your thoughts about Pahrump and Nye County, and they do make a difference.